Tony Iltis, Melbourne
On July 8, the Melbourne Town Hall was filled to capacity when at least 2000 people attended a performance put on by Actors for Refugees.
Performers at the event included Daniela Farinacci, Helen Morse, Alison Whyte, Pamela Rabe and Rebecca Spalding. They recited testimony by refugees, including gruelling accounts of life in the onshore and offshore detention camps and tragedies such as the SIEV-X sinking. Interspersed were readings of statements by government ministers, particularly immigration minister Amanda Vanstone and her predecessor, Philip Ruddock.
Two days earlier, 35 people attended a forum on temporary protection visas organised by the Refugee Action Collective. Hazara TPV holder and RAC activist Achmed Raza spoke about the history of persecution of the Hazara people in Afghanistan and how his hopes for a new life in Australia were shattered by his eight months of detention in Woomera. He described the regime in the detention camps as the "systematic torture of detainees".
Hazara refugees, he said, had been slandered as "not genuine refugees" by Afghan community leaders in Australia who harboured anti-Hazara prejudice. These were right-wing exiles who had come to Australian after the leftist Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan took power in 1978. Many were employed by the immigration department as interpreters for Hazara refugees, despite being unable to speak Hazarawi.
Charandev Singh from the Brimbank Legal Centre and the RMIT Asylum Seekers project, outlined the history of TPVs. Originally proposed by Pauline Hanson in 1998, they were introduced in 1999 with bipartisan Coalition-Labor support
Singh described the restrictions on access to work, education and welfare imposed by TPVs and put their existence, unique to Australia, in the context of Australia's history of racialised cheap labour. There are currently 9300 people on TPVs and another 8000 on even more restrictive bridging visas.
He urged supporters of refugees' rights to reject the ALP's policy of having TPVs that last for two, instead of three, years and other "compromises that are not compromises".
From Green Left Weekly, July 14, 2004.
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